B.C. man fined $600K for Sooke Harbour House fraud
CTV
A Vancouver Island man has been fined $600,000 by the B.C. Securities Commission after he swindled $1 million from an overseas investor under the pretense of owning part of the Sooke Harbour House hotel.
A Vancouver Island man has been fined $600,000 by the B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC) after he swindled $1 million from an overseas investor under the pretense of owning part of the Sooke Harbour House hotel.
The fraud dates back to 2015, when Sooke man Timothy Craig Durkin told an investor that his company, SHH Holdings Limited, owned the Sooke Harbour House.
He told the investor, a woman from China, that if she bought 40 per cent of his shares for SHH Holdings Limited, she would obtain 40 per cent ownership interest of the hotel.
"In reality, at that time, SHH did not own any of the shares in the corporation that owned the hotel," said the BCSC in a release Wednesday.
On three separate occasions between December 2015 and March 2016, the BCSC says that Durkin and SHH misled the investor and her financial advisors about the ownership of the hotel "knowing that they would be taken as an accurate representation of its current financial situation."
"Based on misleading or false information, the investor’s company signed an agreement with SHH and advanced $1 million to purchase the shares."
The funds were later spent and have not been recovered, according to the BCSC.
